by Cyma Shapiro
Just call me M&M or P. Doody. I’m the next Yo’ Ma-Ma-Donna, Lady Cerebellum, or Ice-Cream.
Erykah Fru-Fru,* Afro Queen, Knee-Knee, Chardonnay Pleaze, Unleash My Keys, Ja Skool, Lil’ Sin, Sit-on-This, Jelly, Tina Tuna, Clean MiTeetha. […]
by Andrea Lynn
It is the era of the Bad Mother confessional. Proud recounting of the slacker things we do as moms, the ways in which we defiantly refuse to compete for the Mother of the Year award. Everywhere one turns, it seems, mothers are unashamedly sharing the ways at which they don’t quite meet the needs of their children. […]
by Ilana DeBare
Last month I became a woman.
Four years after my daughter did.
No, this isn’t one of those “I’m my own Grampa” riddles, even though it may sound that way. It’s the story of how I became a midlife Bat Mitzvah at the age of 53, four years after my daughter went through the ritual at the more common age of 13. […]
by Cyma Shapiro
I’ve had several occasions, lately, to just ponder the state of things, and I find myself coming up short.
Last Sunday, a “60 Minutes” expose revealed that nearly 25% of all school-aged children will soon live in families falling below the poverty line. A friend of mine, leaving her husband for another man, shuts the door on me when I show up spontaneously to meet him, saying that he hates unscheduled meetings and our future introductions should take place away from the house. Another friend is teetering dangerously into mental illness. […]
by Julie Donner Andersen
At the moment, I am wearing a pair of stretchy black stirrup pants. One of the elastic bands under my foot has just snapped and now flaps behind the heel of my shoe. There’s a hole the size of a quarter in the crotch, making it impossible for me to sit Indian style on any given floor (like you really believed this middle-aged, flexibility-of-steel mommy could sit in such a way?). […]
by Joely Johnson Mork
This topic is not what this blog post was going to be about. I was going to write about something much lighter, more manageable, and less anxiety provoking. But what has been on my mind for the past few weeks is survival. How do women survive motherhood? How do women like us, who have lived their lives differently for so long, suddenly (or not so suddenly) find themselves mothers and manage to keep working, thinking, breathing? I am unashamed to say I need to know. Because I am finding myself in a corner, with nowhere to run but here. […]
by Valerie Gillies
“CENTERING: that act which precedes all others on the potter’s wheel. The bringing of the clay into a spinning, unwobbling pivot, which will then be free to take innumerable shapes as potter and clay press against each other. The firm, tender, sensitive pressure which yields as much as it asserts. It is like a handclasp between two living hands, receiving the greeting at the very moment that they give it…” – from “Centering – In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person” by M.C. Richard. […]
by Deatra Haimé Anderson
I got my first brand new car in my twenties. It was a silver Volkswagen Jetta with a dark grey interior and automatic sunroof. I was in love, freed, finally, from a completely unreliable and unwieldy Pontiac Grand Am that guzzled gas and was impossible to parallel park. […]
by Julie Beem
The word I use to keep myself on the most optimal therapeutic parenting tract is: BALANCE. After reading, listening, talking, listening, attending countless workshops for the last 12+ years, I have to say that at the crux of all therapeutic parenting theories (whether you call them old school or new age) is balance. Our kids need high nurture; high structure – both in MEGA doses. And I believe that if you look at any of those “experts” offering therapeutic parenting advise to us that high structure/high nurture is espoused in their approach, but called a variety of things. […]
by Peg O'Neill
Amy Chua’s new book, “Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother” has created an impressive flurry of opinion on parenting. This memoir, written by a Chinese-American mother who rejects “The Western Style of Parenting” in favor of a more stringent method consistent with her traditional Chinese upbringing, has ignited praise, criticism and even indignation. It has been a hot topic of discussion in the media, and among many of the mothers who bring their children to my practice. Thus, it was with a considerable amount of curiosity that I began my read of “Tiger Mother.” […]